Raj in the glow of nostalgia

Memoirs of those who have led interesting lives can often hopelessly misfire; what the writer may assume is terribly interesting can come across as dull and tedious to the reader. This is particularly true of memoirs written by politicians and bureaucrats, which usually fall into the “How I changed the course of history” category, with sly or blatant references to their bright ideas. The bigger crime is if this bragging is done in a pompous and self-important way; don’t ask me for names, there are literally scores, if not hundreds of such tomes in the market. Mercifully, after the initial burst of publicity, these books quietly sink into oblivion and can be found, unwanted, in second-hand bookshops.

Pran Nevile’s Carefree Days: Many Roles, Many Lives happily does not fall in that category. Though he had a career that took him to different government departments and ministries, during the British Raj and Independent India and overseas too, he chooses to observe and describe, rather than claim or declaim. The title of his book fits it well — it trots along at a leisurely pace, telling the story of leisurely times, with fondness. There is telling detail and a few anecdotes too, all of which add up to a charming memory of times long gone.

Nevile is known as a writer and author of books on life during the Raj, including one on “Nautch girls”. The Raj looms large in this current work too, but from a personal point of view. He hails from Lahore, and his descriptions of growing up there are suffused with an amber glow of nostalgia. From small observations of the quotidian rhythms of life — the cry of the hawkers, to kushtis and kite-flying to naughty escapades as a young man in the red-light areas of the city, where a willing spirit was overwhelmed by fear and embarrassment, he recalls it all.

The pace of the writing is gentle, though social historians may well wonder, especially as the story moves along, whether the Raj was such a benign force. His chapter “Glimpses of Imperial New Delhi in the 1940s” is almost totally devoid of the tensions leading up to Partition and later, in “Witness to Partition”, he touches more upon the sense of personal loss, when friends left, to be parted for ever.

It is a memoir after all, one might well argue, though a contemporary reader could have benefited from getting a first-hand view of those bloody times. More so since Nevile remembers names of shops, streets and movies in copious detail.

It is the early chapters that are the most evocative. His rendition of his clandestine love affair with a cousin, followed by elopement and then marriage is delightfully old fashioned in the recounting: “On my part, I was glad to have learnt my first lessons in the love game. The art of physically attracting the opposite sex needs careful study to ensure one does not err and cause offence. Thus any deliberate brushing with the female body must seem unintentional and accidental, to be ignored. A couple of other parties with average looks came my way and I felt some thrill in practising this art. Falling in love and pining for the object of one’s adulation was still something alien to me.”

From here on, the saga moves to the various jobs he held in India and abroad. It is fascinating to read the early development of the nation’s bureaucracy, as newly Independent India creating its own steel frame. After a stint in India, Nevile was sent as the commercial representative in various embassies, in Japan, Poland, erstwhile Yugoslavia and then Moscow.

Life in the eastern bloc in the post-Second World War period was about shortages and paranoia, with the occasional bursts of local colour and culture.

In that post-colonial world, India was much-loved and respected in the Soviet bloc and elsewhere too, as a beacon of democracy and a leader of the Third World.

Younger readers may find some of the stories quite intriguing. One only wishes that Nevile told some of these in a punchier manner, with a build up and then the climax; even the occasional anecdote about a spy is told in a matter-of-fact way, thus dulling its impact. And does one really want to read about so many trade exhibitions and delegations

The final part of the book is about Nevile’s emergence as a writer of books, mainly on life during the Raj, but this ends up being a rapid fire listing of things he did and people he met, with little or no description to provide any texture. A strong editor would have curbed this tendency, seen throughout the book on page 98, for example, I counted no less than six mentions of people being “invited” to some party or dinner, one after the other. Such copious detail does nothing for the book.

One must however emphasise that the book is an easy read, and the author is blessed with a good memory. Happily, he is not given to too much self-aggrandisement, a disease that many civil servants suffer from. There are too few personal histories out there about life in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, so such a book is more than welcome.

Sidharth Bhatia is a journalist and writer based in Mumbai. He is a founding editor of The Wire.